1. Technical Field
The invention relates to the conversion of transaction submission processes into a generic object in a computer environment. More particularly, the invention relates to the conversion of transaction submission processes in an information processing application into a generic proposal object in a computer environment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The information processing industry faces a mounting backlog in developing applications to handle transactions. Significant parts of the development process have been sped up through the use of tools, architecture, and reusable components. Referring to FIG. 1, few efficiencies have been gained in programming the large stretch of the application 102 that links user interface 101 with the database manager or transaction monitor 103 that controls changes to the stored database. This area of programming 102 is made from scratch, by hand, for each of the perhaps thousands of applications that an organization might need in a year.
With respect to FIG. 2, the basic problem is a semantic mismatch between the two ends of the system. User input enters the system front-end 201 as "atoms" of information, while the back-end resource 203 deals with large, complex data "molecules." The input that user interfaces 201 collect is fine-grained - - - typed characters, clicked buttons, scanned-in codes, etc. - - -, with little built-in sense of relationship among them. There is usually some organization of characters into fields and occasionally of fields into "pages," but user interface structure stops at this point.
It falls to the application programmer to individually map each small field or page to its proper place in the large and complex structure that will be presented to the transactional back-end 203. These mappings consist of programmatic hard-wiring 202. So even a simple transactional application has at its center 202 a maze of hand-built, application-specific connections that are time-consuming to construct and difficult to change. A labor-intensive redesign is required whenever new features are desired.
It would be advantageous to provide an architecture system that isolates the transaction submission process making it independent of both the front-end and back-end thereby creating an object that can be accessed via multiple user interfaces and detachable from the back-end, thus freeing up the back-end resources. It would further be advantageous to provide an architecture system that takes advantage of the generic properties of the object, thereby allowing it to be reusable for any new types of transactions that the user desires.